Meredith Beyers - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 4, No. 3 — December 1921)

“Sounds good to me,” was his comment. “Let’s give her the once over.”

Although Jack feared the blunders the rough-neck might make with Mary, his anxiety proved to be groundless when they reached the cabin. Cox was as decent as could be, even though Mary Gage received him with visible mistrust. Toward Jack, she acted as an old friend who had suddenly become silent — silent and watchful.

“Some girl all right, sonny,” Cox commented when they were out of earshot of the cabin. “I suppose she’d only have to ask it and you’d cut off your right hand, or rob a bank, or go to the electric chair for her sake?”

“She hasn’t asked anything like that.”

“What if she should now?”

“Oh— I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Jack did not see the appraising look with which his companion regarded him. Cox nodded in approval as they trudged on.

The visitor had insisted that they go to Jack’s camp. When they reached the rocky island in the swamp, he shared in cooking their lunch with the joy of a schoolboy playing hookey.

“This is real roughing it!” he declared. “Certainly a queer place, though. Looks as if Nature got tired or went nutty when she came to this job. That bunch of rocks across the swamp, now— Some giant’s kid might have piled ’em up for a playhouse—”

“I call that the Bag of Bones,” replied Jack with a laugh.

“Not a bad name, either.” Cox buried his face in his coffee mug.

For a moment, Jack was tempted to tell of the mysterious light which he had seen on the summit of the Bag of Bones. Then the impulse passed. The incident was too fantastic, too much like a dream for the boy to trust his senses and vouch for its truth.

Their meal ended, Cox decided to return at once to Honesdale. They had crossed the swamp and were passing the southern side of the Bag of Bones when he came to a sudden halt.

“Say, sonny,” he drawled, “do you get it? That funny smell?”

“I sure do.” A volatile odor filled Jack’s nostrils.

“What d’ye suppose makes it?”

“It smells like ether.”

“Right! Now who d’ye suppose uses ether in among them rocks?” he asked with a laugh. “Hardly a place I’d look for a chorus girl cleaning her gloves!”

Cox parted with Jack curtly. His thoughts seemed to be on other things. Watching the flivver recede along the highway, the boy suspected that his visitor had not come to the forest merely to hunt. What other purpose could he have had? Ramsey had not found an answer to the riddle when, after setting his new traps, he made his way through the twilight to his camp.

Approaching the rocky island, he saw at once that something unusual had happened there. A rapid survey confirmed his fears. His camp, so far as malice could accomplish it, had been destroyed!

Jack’s lean jaws snapped. The fighting blood of his Yankee ancestors surged to his face. He snatched up his gun and crouched beside the causeway to watch under the stars.

Into the rebuilding of his camp the next day, Ramsey put much of his defiance. Every pole that he cut, every nail driven had in it hatred for his unknown enemies. The supplies he had brought from Honesdale in Cox’s flivver and cached near the highway assured his comfort. He prepared for a siege.

Also he determined to protect his traps. Two forked hickory saplings, near a secluded trail which the thief must follow, suggested a means. In the forks he wedged his gun tightly, pointing it upward to cover the trail and bracing the barrel and butt with stakes crossed near the tops. The weapon adjusted and loaded, he fastened a stout cord to the trigger and passed it among the saplings so that it was stretched tightly across the trail. Thus the thief could not press against the cord without firing a charge of buckshot into himself.

Ramsey slept that night in a thicket near his man-trap. In the early morning a crash awakened him. The bark of his gun! The boy broke from cover into the trail and shouted at a vague, crouching figure near the gun. At sight of Jack, the man gave a leap and disappeared in the neighboring woodland.

Came the patter of footsteps on the soft earth; the light steps of one running. Ramsey drew back into the shadow of the wood, alert on his toes as a panther gathered to spring if occasion demands.

It was not the fellow whom he had seen at first, but apparently his accomplice; the flying body tensely bent, the arms outflung in an extremity of effort. In a moment the fugitive was upon him—

“Stop—”

Jack’s outflung hand arrested the flight of Mary Gage! The girl sank at his feet, panting from exhaustion.

“You know now — I’m the trap thief!” she gasped presently.

“I’m not accusing you,” he replied, helping her to her feet.

“Don’t be polite! You’re not blind!” An outflung hand brushing the tangled hair from her eyes served as well to sweep aside the amenities. “I didn’t believe you’d set a gun to catch us. Since you did, it would have been better if I had been shot. I’m the guilty one and in my right mind, not a poor half-wit—”

“You mean Jimmie Willets was shot?”

“Yes! But don’t worry about Jimmie. Our friends will give him the best of care.”

“I don’t see— Why did you and he go out, night after night, to steal my traps?”

For a moment she seemed to be groping for an excuse, then turned to him with a childlike frankness.

“I know you won’t believe me, Lean Jaw, but I’m telling the truth when I say I don’t know why we must steal your traps. We took them because — we were asked to do so. You should know, perhaps, that we’re very poor — stony broke. We came here last spring from Long Island, where Dad’s truck farm went to smash and left us in debt. Dad was offered this job of his and much more money than he’d ever earned before. He told me a few days ago that his job and our money would be lost unless you were driven out of here. He asked me to take your traps—”

“I interfered with his plans— Is that it?”

“Dad told me that the kick came from his bosses. Oh! Don’t be huffy about it! I like you, Lean Jaw— Like you as well as any fellow I know. I like you so well that I say — first, last and all the time — don’t butt into this. Give up trapping and go back to Honesdale. You can’t fight these people single handed. They’re too strong, too many and have too much money back of them! I’ve been jollying Dad by telling him you’re discouraged and about to quit. I can hardly say that now that you’re fighting back and Jimmie Willets is hurt. But it’s not too late for you to get out—”

“You would have me go?” he asked tensely.

“I’d have you near me—” She cut short his words of tenderness and added in her businesslike way: “But you don’t know yet the secret of Dad’s bosses. If you should stumble on it someday, then ‘Good-bye, Lean Jaw’—”

“These men you speak of? They’re here, in the wilderness?”

“Sure they are! Is there a better place to work secretly within a hundred miles of New York?”

“What are they doing? You must have a hint of it; must have learned something—”

“I told Dad I wouldn’t ask and I haven’t,” she evaded.

“Perhaps I know more than you, Mary. With what I’ve learned and you suspect, we may piece out the truth.” He told her of the strong light and the odor of ether near the Bag of Bones, the footprints with their curious ridges, the big automobile, the outlook in the pine tree and the balanced stone.

“You’re wise!” she observed cryptically. “Oh! Lean Jaw! I beg of you— Go at once! After what you’ve learned—”